The next session at ECREA 2024 that I’m attending is on communication in times of illiberalism, and starts with Natalie-Anne Hall. Her focus is on political engagement around Brexit on Facebook, in the post-referendum period between 2017 and 2019. Rather than gathering Facebook content, this study focussed on Facebook users – in recognition of the fact that Facebook remains the leading mainstream social network in the UK.
The post-Brexit context was ripe for populist discursive appeals, which claimed that political elites were attempting to undermine the Brexit referendum results; this was actively fanned by illiberal and often also racist groups – populist appeals, coupled with racist and conservative views, acted as a gateway for far-right activism.
The study engage with 15 avid pro-Brexit Facebook users, who were interviewed twice, and observed their posts for a period of one month; these posts were also used as prompts in interviews. Euroscepticism mingled here with far-right, racist, and xenophobic content; another strong stream of material expressed strong anti-leftist views, painting the left, conflated with remainers, as villains, morally bankrupt, deviant, immature, irrational, abusive, and violent.
This was contrasted with the dignity and superior moral character claimed for those on the right. Analogous to white victimhood, this can be described as ‘right victimhood’ – a discursive stance which might have greater potential than white victimhood as it removes the overt racism from such discourse. Anti-left discourse was also connected with attacks on Islam, feminism, transgender and gay rights – this attacks supposed leftist political correctness, wokeness, and cancel culture. Strong anti-communist sentiment directed against the EU and its supposed redistributive and authoritarian nature was also mixed into this. Notably, interviewees who expressed such views were all older and had lived through the Cold War era.
Such claims connect with common far-right conspiracy theory of cultural Marxism, even if interviewees often poorly understood what they were even railing against. Facebook clearly played a role in spreading such far-right ideas and conspiracy theories to new audiences.
